INTERVIEW-West should treat Syria, Iran like Libya-Israel

PARIS, March 24 (Reuters) - Iran and Syria pose a greater
security threat than Libya and the West should treat those
countries in the same way as it has Muammar Gaddafi's
government, Israel's foreign minister said on Thursday.

In a brief interview with Reuters after meeting his French
counterpart, Alain Juppe, Avigdor Lieberman also said a recent
upsurge of violence on the Gaza border and Wednesday's bomb
attack in Jerusalem were "incitement" by the Palestinians.

Western warplanes hit Libyan tanks during a fifth night of
airstrikes as they enforced a U.N. resolution aimed at stopping
Gaddafi's counter-offensive against rebels seeking an end to his
rule.

Lieberman did not explicitly call for military action
against Syria and Iran, but he said: "I think that the same
principles, activities the Western world (has taken) in Libya
... I hope to see those regarding the Iranian regime and the
Syrian regime."

Syrian security forces fired on hundreds of youth protesters
in southern Syria on Wednesday, according to witnesses, in a
dramatic escalation of six days of protests in which at least 32
civilians have been killed.

"These two regimes kill more citizens than the Libyan regime
does, and the threat from these countries is much more serious
than that from Libya," Lieberman said. Iran has also used force
to crush pro-democracy street protests in the recent past.
Israeli naval commandos seized a cargo ship in the
Mediterranean Sea on March 15 carrying what Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said were Iranian-supplied weapons intended
for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip..

Analysts say that position has given him broad licence to
tell the United Nations that Middle East peace is a distant
dream, whatever Netanyahu may say, and promote a "loyalty oath"
for Israeli Arabs to flush out the unpatriotic.

PALESTINIAN "INCITEMENT"

Violence on the Gaza border has spiked in recent days and a
bomb attack in Jerusalem that police blamed on Palestinian
militants killed one woman and injured 30 people on Wednesday.
It was the first such attack in the city since 2004.

Lieberman called the surge in violence a direct result of
"incitement" on the Palestinian side.

Peace talks aimed at ending the decades-old conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians broke down last year after Netanyahu
refused to extend a partial freeze on Jewish settlement building
in the occupied West Bank.

"I see a lot of efforts in the Palestinian Authority for
reconciliation with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but I don't see any
readiness for direct talks with Israel," he said. "It is totally
unacceptable."

Lieberman said Israel was ready for direct talks with the
Palestinians despite the current status quo.

"I believe any change in the peace process must be as a
result of direct talks and not unilateral steps and not as a
unilateral decision even of the international community," he
said.
(Additional reporting by Ludovic Vickers; editing by Paul
Taylor)